Take Me (Take Me 1)

The line went dead, and Janica hung up the phone, confused, but for the first time, hopeful that her sister might actually be living life instead of hiding behind a wall of responsibility and fear. There were so many times that Janica had wanted to tell Lily to go out and get a life. To dress up and get her hair cut in a sassy new style. To stay out all night with a totally inappropriate guy. To look in the mirror and actually see how beautiful she really was. But Janica knew Lily would never do any of those things.

For some crazy reason, Janica mused, Lily thought that she wasn’t a stunning woman because she wasn’t stick-thin. Janica had watched Lily suffer through one diet after another until she wanted to scream with it.

But then again, Janica marveled at how Lily was, all of a sudden, getting all the guys. Not that Travis was any kind of super prize, of course, he was way too much like a typical macho guy for her.

But Luke, on the other hand, had definite possibilities. Big, throbbing possibilities. Smiling again as she got to work on her latest men’s suit design, Janica couldn’t help but envision how Luke’s broad shoulders and trim waist would look in her clothes.

Or better yet, without them.

Lily stood in the middle of the huge, busy warehouse and ran her hands over the beautiful imported upholstery fabrics, feeling as if she were a fairly-tale princess in a perfect dream. How else could she possibly be standing amidst all of this multicolored, richly textured beauty, able, for the first time, to let her imagination roam freely?

After the most pleasant five minutes she had ever spent with Albert All in Barker’s that morning, where she picked up the sweater she had forgotten and got to watch him sputtering and spitting all over himself at her resignation, even though she hadn’t had the nerve to tell him exactly what she thought of him, she hopped in her car and headed straight for the San Francisco Design Center.

When she had first graduated from design school she loved to walk through the cluttered building, letting all of the beautiful furnishings fill her soul to the brim. But then, when she finally accepted that she didn’t have the guts to start her own design firm, not with so many other talented, driven designers out there all vying for the same jobs, she stopped coming to her favorite place. All it did was make her feel even more like a loser. Especially when she saw somebody from her graduating class walking around with a cell phone making purchases for a client. She knew she had to accept that she worked at a subpar furniture store, selling pressboard armoires and faux-leather couches. Hundred-thousand-dollar rugs and cut-crystal chandeliers had no place in her world.

Today, she almost felt like she belonged in the showroom, and it was wonderful. Lily felt freer than she had since she was a child, safe in her mother’s arms, before her parents had died in the car crash on Highway One. Overnight, Lily had become a mother to Janica, giving all of herself up to make sure that her baby sister’s life was as good as it could possibly be under the circumstances. Grandma Ellen had done the best she could with them, but Lily knew she was the only one who could even come close to loving, supporting, and taking care of Janica the way their mother and father had. Lily didn’t regret one single moment with Janica. She wouldn’t take back any sacrifices in the name of her sister’s happiness.

Lily was the sensible grounded one, happy to let Janica fly free into the world.

But, somehow, amazingly, Travis had given Lily the gift of flying free herself.

Not that she trusted him, though. Not one bit. He had clearly brought her out to the pool to seduce her, and although she definitely didn’t mind his incredible lovemaking—oh, who was she kidding, there was no love about it, it was sex, pure and simple—she minded the fact that Travis thought all he had to do was crook his finger in her direction, and she’d come running.

She ran her fingers through the soft weave of a plush rug sample and thought about the sensual pleasure of running her hands through Travis’s hair. Regardless of what happened with him, even if he reverted to his usual superior behavior with her and never looked at her with lust in his eyes again, she didn’t regret one single second in his arms. The memories of his loving would be the perfect antidote to lonely nights in her apartment with only cable TV as her companion.

At the same time, Lily wasn’t naive enough to think that this job didn’t come with strings attached. But right then, lost in her own creative heaven, she decided she wasn’t going to care.

Lily could hardly believe that she was going to furnish the beautiful Tuscan-style villa. This was her chance to make her mark in the design community. Regardless of how her private life was going, she wasn’t going to blow her one big professional opportunity. Under no circumstances was she going to go crawling back to Albert at Barker’s.

Her cell phone rang. She reached into her purse and looked at the number on her caller-ID screen.

“Janica?”

“Lils, why didn’t you tell me you were going to Tuscany?”

Lily blinked in confusion. “Tuscany? I’m not going to Tuscany. Who told you that?” Her call waiting beeped. “Hold on a sec, honey, I’m going to get the other line.”

“Lily, it’s Luke. I wanted to congratulate you. Whatever you did with Travis, it worked like a charm.”

Glad that her best friend couldn’t see her blushing through the phone as the clear vision of riding Travis’s c**k in a stranger’s swimming pool popped into her head, Lily said, carefully, “You mean because he hired me to decorate one of his clients’ houses?”

“So that’s why you’re going to Italy?”

Lily held the phone away from her ear and looked at it like it was speaking in foreign tongues. “Why is everyone talking about my going to Italy?”

Travis emerged from behind a tall stack of rugs, looking darkly dangerous and handsome as sin. He took the phone from her ear, closing it with a quick snap. Lily gulped for air and put a hand out to steady herself.

“Because we’re leaving for Rome tomorrow. That’s why.”

A thrill shot through Lily at Travis’s words. Travis wanted to take her to Italy? Just the two of them?

Visions of walking with him hand in hand through olive groves, on ancient streets danced in her head.

Don’t be silly, she reprimanded herself as she worked to tamp down her fanciful imagination. She composed her face into a mask of professional politeness, wanting to show him she wasn’t a complete fool who fell for his every line.

“Travis,” she said through tight lips, “while I greatly appreciate you handing me this incredible decorating job, I’m afraid it doesn’t give you license to mock me at every available opportunity.”